Day 4: Children are a Gift

I have been studying Turkish for four years now. Learning a new language does some interesting things to your brain for sure, but as a lover of words, I adore having new words to use to describe things. Sometimes when I’m trying to tell a story to Hubby I will throw in a random Turkish word or phrase because it conveys something I can’t quite say in English. (Yes, I am aware this places me in a “dork” category.)

A couple years ago I was reading in the Turkish Bible each morning. I had memorized Psalm 127:3 as a verse to share when friends asked why we have so many children:

Children are a gift from the Lord;
they are a reward from him.

And I was working on Romans 6:23 as another verse to share with my friends:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For some reason I had never connected in English that both verses talk about gifts from the Lord. But it leapt off the page in Turkish for me. Our children are described with the same word “gift” as our salvation through Christ!

In a world that treats children like inconveniences, pests, bothers… anything but gifts, this was a sweet find for me. And a good reminder– may I always remember that these messy, funny, loud, cuddly, sniffling, tender little people are precious gifts from a good God. And may I treat them as such!